#russia's black sea fleet

[tomorrowusa]

Today is Day 817 of Vladimir Putin's 3-day "special operation" in Ukraine. Just to provide context, 817 days after Hitler's invasion of Poland was 26 November 1941; the US had yet to enter World War II.

So no matter how much Russia tries to hide its warships, Ukraine keeps finding them and destroying them.

The latest Russian warship to sleep with the fishes is the Kovrovets (Ковровец).

Ukraine’s Navy said on May 19 that it had “destroyed” Russian sea minesweeper Kovrovets overnight, refuting Moscow’s earlier claims of having repelled strikes on occupied Crimea. The report comes amid Ukraine’s ongoing campaign targeting the Russian Black Sea Fleet, inflicting damage on warships one after another. In April, Ukraine’s Navy had said that it struck Kommuna, a salvage ship that was launched in 1915 and is the oldest ship still in service in the Russian Navy. Earlier on May 19, Moscow claimed that it had shot down nine U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles, and a drone over Crimea. Ukraine’s Navy has not elaborated on how the reported strike was carried out. Russian proxy official in Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said at around midnight that the air defense was working in the city. He said no damage to civilian infrastructure was recorded. The sea minesweeper Kovrovets, with a crew of 68 people, belongs to the Project 266 Akvamarin class, known in NATO as the Yurka class. This Soviet-origin class detects mines up to 150 meters deep and has two 30mm AK-230M naval guns with a high-resolution Lynx radar installed.

[henk-heijmans]

Sailors of the Navy Fleet, Black Sea, Sevastopol, Ukraine/Russia, 1930s - by Sergey Shimansky (1898 - 1972), Ukrainian

[blueiscoool]

Ukraine Destroys Russia’s Brand-New $65 Million Warship Sergei Kotov

Ukraine has destroyed the newest patrol ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the $65 million Sergei Kotov, and left pro-Kremlin war reporters sulking.

“As a result of a strike by Magura V5 maritime drones, the Russian Project 22160 ship Sergei Kotov received damage to the stern, starboard and left sides,” Ukrainian military intelligence said in a statement.

“The fewer such ships, the fewer anti-aircraft missile systems will be deployed on them, meaning more opportunities for Ukrainian security and defense forces,” spokesman Andriy Yusov told local media, adding that more than 10 ambulances were spotted rushing to help the evacuated crew members. At least seven crew members were killed, Ukrainian authorities said.

Audio of what Ukraine described as an intercepted radio communication also appeared to capture a Russian commander reporting on the “tragic event” and destruction of the ship, lamenting that a helicopter had also been obliterated in the nighttime attack near the Kerch Strait.

The 308-foot, 1,700-ton ship entered the Black Sea Fleet in July 2022.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has yet to comment on the incident, though pro-Kremlin military bloggers begrudgingly admitted that Ukraine had pulled off the attack.

“If it continues like this, the Black Sea Fleet will have only catamarans and rubber banana boats for vacationers. It’s fucked,” wrote one popular pro-war Telegram channel.

The Sergei Kotov had been targeted in three previous attacks by Ukrainian forces before finally being taken out this time around. Noting that Russia had plenty of defenses in place to protect the ship, pro-war propagandist Alexander Kots said that “unfortunately, the enemy is also evolving.”

“The crew fought heroically until the end. … But this time it is a story without a happy ending,” he wrote on social media.

“The ship ‘Sergei Kotov’ sunk,” wrote former Vladimir Putin adviser Sergei Markov, calling it part of a “new type of war” in which “what matters most are the multitude of drones, space reconnaissance, and electronic warfare.”

“This is where we need to overtake the West,” he said.

By Allison Quinn.

[memenewsdotcom]

Ukraine says it killed Russia Black Sea Fleet commander

[medicinemane]

I'm not fucking listening to a video on geopolitics if you're gonna but dramatic fucking generic as shitty movie music in the background

This isn't Batman trying to figure out what the Joker is up to, this is real world shit going on, and I'm fairly familiar with the subject and you just happened to have a detail I don't know as much about in your title

So I'm like cool, let me learn about what's going on with that

Well I'm clearly not gonna with your shitty video. You're a backwards clickbaiting moron trying to drum up investment using techniques I think are cheap and bland in even movies, so why would I want them here?

You absolute pissant, you fucking stain on society, you're a worthless little idiot with nothing useful to say that's trying to turn important shit into entertainment and I think you suck ass

Fucking hell, imagine I talked about the US economy while playing bad dramatic music in the background, it would be stupid

I clearly know more about this than you, for an american civilian with no special access to information, I'm probably one of the better informed people on this subject. Your yank ass can fuck off cause it's really only people actually from the area and actual professionals that are gonna know more than me on this

I am actually annoyed, and I'm just annoyed by every last fucking thing being turned into entertainment by random little internet parasite

[jovialbasementbouquetblr]

2023: Swedish Armed Forces' "Lessons from the War in Ukraine"

Translations from Swedish today. I saw this Swedish Defense Force unclassified report on lessons learned thus far from the War in Ukraine mentioned on Lars Wilderäng’s twitter feed @Cornubot and on his blog Cornucopia: Eternal Growth in a Finite World. Lars Wilderäng is a Swedish writer who according to his agency’s website, has a “great interest in politics and societal issues shines through in…

[head-post]

Russia deploys trained dolphins at Black Sea naval base

The Russian Navy is using trained dolphins to protect important bases from special forces divers, according to Naval News.

These marine mammals are already stationed at the entrance to Sevastopol harbour in Crimea. According to news reports, the Russian Navy has deployed dolphins at another base in the northern part of Crimea.

The deployment of troops is probably aimed at defence against Ukrainian special forces who pose a threat in the area.

Trained dolphins are used against military divers. No human can swim over a dolphin. Moreover, the inbuilt sonar gives them an even greater advantage.  Most likely, dolphins are used to protect ships from limpet mine divers or reconnaissance divers. Once they detect an intruder, they can tag it for their human counterparts to reconnoiter, and possibly deliver a lethal blow. Perhaps the dolphins are patrolling the coast where Ukrainian special forces are conducting raids on coastal targets.

Read more HERE

[i-news-you]

Welcome to "I News You"! In today's video, we're delving into the astonishing saga of Viktor Sokolov, the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and the enigmatic events that have gripped the world.

Segment 1: Join us as we uncover the jaw-dropping twist in this story - Sokolov's miraculous return from the dead. Was he really killed in a missile attack in Crimea, or is there more to this tale than meets the eye?

Segment 2: We'll dissect the Ukrainian special forces' bold claim about Sokolov's demise and reveal the shocking evidence they presented. But can we trust it?

[otthonzulles]

Kilo-class submarine made 2014 called "Rostov-na-Donu" after the Storm Shadow attack in Sevastopol dry-dock, 13/09/2023

It's just a scratch!

[niveditaabaidya]

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Strengthens Defences. #crimea #news #ukraine #m...

[tomorrowusa]

Russia, which tankies and Trumpsters bizarrely worship as some sort of unbeatable superpower, has just had another one of its submarines in the Black Sea destroyed. The Rostov-on-Don (Ростов-на-Дону), which was launched the year Putin illegally annexed Crimea, is now sleeping with the fishes.

Ukraine's military said on August 3 that it had sunk a submarine in Russian-controlled Sevastopol, attacked a southern Russian airfield, and targeted oil depots and fuel and lubricant storage facilities in a number of regions. "A Russian submarine went to the bottom of the Black Sea," the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on X, naming the vessel as the B-237 Rostov-on-Don attack submarine.

Ukraine also took out several S-400 missile launchers nearby which likely had been targeting civilians in Ukraine.

The military's General Staff said the attack on the Crimean port also significantly damaged four launchers of the S-400 anti-aircraft Triumf defense system. There was no immediate comment from Russia on the attack. Earlier, on the night of August 2, dozens of drones were launched against targets in at least three Russian regions, setting two oil storage facilities ablaze, Russian authorities reported.

There can't be much left of Russia's Black Sea fleet. The remaining ships mostly cower at the eastern end of the sea to try to stay out of range of Ukrainian drones and missiles.

[politicoscope]

Russian Military Closes Ukrainian Grain Corridor Through the Black Sea

Russian Military Closes Ukrainian Grain Corridor Through the Black Sea

The Russian military closed the so-called “grain corridor” used to ship Ukrainian agriculture products through the Black Sea on Monday. The move was provoked by the actions of Ukraine, which used the route to launch attacks on Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said. “Any navigation through the security corridor designated under the Black Sea [grain shipment] initiative would be halted until…

[zvaigzdelasas]

[TIME is Private US Media]

[By Anatol Lieven]

The long-awaited counteroffensive last year failed. Russia has recaptured Avdiivka, its biggest war gain in nine months. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to quietly acknowledge the new military reality. The Biden Administration’s strategy is now to sustain Ukrainian defense until after the U.S. presidential elections, in the hope of wearing down Russian forces in a long war of attrition.

This strategy seems sensible enough, but contains one crucially important implication and one potentially disastrous flaw, which are not yet being seriously addressed in public debates in the West or Ukraine. The implication of Ukraine standing indefinitely on the defensive—even if it does so successfully—is that the territories currently occupied by Russia are lost. Russia will never agree at the negotiating table to surrender land that it has managed to hold on the battlefield.

This does not mean that Ukraine should be asked to formally surrender these lands, for that would be impossible for any Ukrainian government. But it does mean that—as Zelensky proposed early in the war with regard to Crimea and the eastern Donbas—the territorial issue will have to be shelved for future talks.

As we know from Cyprus, which has been divided between the internationally recognized Greek Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 1974, such negotiations can continue for decades without a solution or renewed conflict. A situation in which Ukraine retains its independence, its freedom to develop as a Western democracy, and 82% of its legal territory (including all its core historic lands) would have been regarded by previous generations of Ukrainians as a real victory, though not a complete one.

As I found in Ukraine last year, many Ukrainians in private were prepared to accept the loss of some territories as the price of peace if Ukraine failed to win them back on the battlefield and if the alternative was years of bloody war with little prospect of success. The Biden Administration needs to get America on board too.[...]

Ukrainians have scored some notable successes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, but to take back Crimea they would need to be able to launch a massive amphibious landing, an exceptionally difficult operation far beyond their capabilities in terms of ships and men. Attacks on Russian infrastructure are pinpricks given Russia’s size and resources.

More realistic is the suggestion that by standing on the defensive this year, Ukrainians can inflict such losses on the Russians that—if supplied with more Western weaponry—they can counterattack successfully in 2025. However, this depends on the Russians playing the game the way Kyiv and Washington want to play it.

The Russian strategy at present appears to be different. They have drawn Ukrainians into prolonged battles for small amounts of territory like Avdiivka, where they have relied on Russian superiority in artillery and munitions to wear them down through constant bombardment. They are firing three shells to every one Ukrainian; and thanks in part to help from Iran, Russia has now been able to deploy very large numbers of drones.

For Ukrainians to stand a chance, military history suggests that they would need a 3-to-2 advantage in manpower and considerably more firepower. Ukraine enjoyed these advantages in the first year of the war, but they now lie with Russia, and it is very difficult to see how Ukraine can recover them.[...]

A successful peace process would undoubtedly involve some painful concessions by Ukraine and the West. Yet the pain would be more emotional than practical, and a peace settlement would have to involve Putin giving up the plan with which he began the war, to turn the whole of Ukraine into a Russian vassal state, and recognizing the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its de facto present borders.

For the lost Ukrainian territories are lost, and NATO membership is pointless if the alliance is not prepared to send its own troops to fight for Ukraine against Russia. Above all, however painful a peace agreement would be today, it will be infinitely more so if the war continues and Ukraine is defeated.

24 Feb 24

[memenewsdotcom]

#Russia suspends #Ukraine #grain deal

[highlights-of-the-lowlife]

"its too late to matter" fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou

this does matter especially in the long term. the crimean bridge gets shut to traffic quite often due to ukrainian strikes in the area. that means the landing ships *were* the most efficient way to resupply the southern front for periods in this war and now they are basically extinct in the black sea.

this is a shaping operation. its cutting one avenue of resupply because shuttling cargo on smaller vessels is going to take longer than the consumption rate on the frontlines. with the seas cut off, now all ukraine has to do is finish off that fucking bridge and then the southern front can only be resupplied from the north.

yes, rail lines are harder to interdict but with the shipping and hopefully soon the bridge gone, ukraine could then focus the majority of its assets on fucking up the northern rail line. i think they'd have an effect.

also its just plain funny watching the black sea fleet being converted into artificial reefs by a country with no navy. every sunken russian ship further safeguards the grain corridor that feeds the world.

once again fuck you

[head-post]

Russia accuses West of facilitating missile attack on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters

On Wednesday, Russia accused Ukraine’s Western allies of facilitating last week’s missile strike on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea.

Unconfirmed news reports said Storm Shadow missiles provided to Ukraine by the UK and France were used in the attack on the headquarters. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing:

There is no doubt that the attack had been planned in advance using Western intelligence means, NATO satellite assets and reconnaissance planes and was implemented upon the advice of American and British security agencies and in close coordination with them.

Learn more HERE